“Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three,” said the poet Philip Larkin.

Okay. We won’t dispute it. But we declare that POLITICAL SEX began in 1968.

With the birth of the New Left. That was when the Left gave up “the exploitation of the proletariat” as its excuse for destroying Western civilization, because twenty years after WWII the proletariat in the Western world was making lots of money from its “exploitation” and refusing to complain about it. Instead, the well-off well-educated soft-living New Left leaders picked on non-whites and women to act in the name of. To put an end to the “oppression” of those races and that sex, they wanted to make a revolution and establish a world-controlling communist regime. Ever since then, Racism and Sexism have characterized the Left.

“Make Love Not War” was their slogan. The only individual freedom they were for, was sexual freedom.

It was “the dawn of the age of Aquarius“; an age apparently favoring sexual copulation. They made so much love in California’s bay area – especially in San Francisco – that, doctors said, sexually transmitted diseases that had not been known to the medical profession since the middle ages were once more common, mostly among young middle-class men and women – the  revolutionaries.

There was a climate not of rape but of promiscuity – particularly on campus – set off by sex-positive feminism (women could be as aggressive in pursuit of the big O as men).

Women demanded sexual equality with men. The pill helped. Anything men could do, women could do.

Laws making work-place harassment and having “a hostile environment for women”, created a plaintiff bar. Discrimination against women – not hiring and not  promoting – gave rise to a proliferation of  law-suits. Huge class actions.

A lot of women and their lawyers filed suits for extorting settlements, including women for whom the casting couch gambit did not pay off.

Of course, the “casting couch” was used by unscrupulous men and women. It always had been. It was a time-honored tradition. That didn’t begin in the 1960s! But after 1968, women who didn’t get the part they parted their limbs for, could start a new tradition and sue.

Not all did, of course; and not all suits were successful. Had they been, everything might have been different. Marilyn Monroe pointed out that if she had said no, 25 other women would have said yes.

Hollywood is a flesh-peddler. It is not a source of  moral guidance – though it often pretends to be. It is not an oracular shrine where the higher wisdom may be sought – though it often pretends to be that too. Women stars and starlets sell their looks. And since not all great “sex symbols” have acting talent, the casting couch was useful to manipulative people of both sexes. The difference since 1968 is that Hollywood came to think of itself as “on the side of history”. Since promiscuity was IN, the casting couch ceased to be a naughty open secret and became a model of Political Correctness. Or so the arbiters of sexual mores – the Left – chose to believe. And since everyone who was anyone was on the Left, it was okay for a movie mogul – such as Harvey Weinstein – to demand sex from a pretty girl who wanted him to give her a starring role in his next blockbuster.  

That ethos of the sixties, seventies and eighties (especially among educated elites) –  “Make Love, Not War”, no shame in your body, sexual satisfaction is a right, sex is liberating, sex experimentation is mind-expanding, marriage is slavery, conventional prudery is fascism – was a great time for men. All men. (Though not such a good time for professional prostitutes who suddenly had the competition of no-charge, anytime, anywhere princesses.)

Rich, powerful and famous men have always attracted women. They could take their pick among their groupies. They could grow old and fat and still have a glamorous young wife. The difference between groupies and would-be wives is that groupies accept the sex itself as their reward – morally reinforced by “sex-positive” feminism.

The Trophy Wife (always a second or third) started by simply being  younger and more beautiful than the old wives. But the role developed, evolved. She had not only to be younger and more beautiful, she had also to have had a career, or even achieved fame and fortune in her own right. The career aspect of the Executive Woman became a selling point in itself, adding to Her price and His status when He could claim Her as His.

But there is no Big Girl, growing up in the Western world, who does not know the difference between a low status groper and a Big Boy. No Big Girl is incapable of saying no or yes to Mr. Shlub or Mr. Big. Big Girls can throw off a wandering hand without being traumatized. Big Girls know the difference between a grope and rape, a pass and sexual harassment. Big Girls (Jolie, Paltrow) do not have to squawk aloud and publicly denounce sexual harassment or groping.

And so – Big Girls who settle out of court with Mr. Rich Big, getting dollars in exchange for non-disclosure, should abide by that agreement. They have been compensated for their loss of financial opportunity (which is what “loss of face” and “loss of self-esteem” are really all about).  

Are unwanted passes irritating? Yes. Are they blows against the sanctity of women’s bodies?  No. (It was the patriarchal ownership of women that conferred a “don’t touch” taboo on them  – and which still in Islam renders them corrupted, filthy and discardable when used by non-owners. Rape is an artifact of Patriarchy.) Marriage and marriageability made Woman non-violable. What has replaced them for her protection is the politics of identity. A woman now owns herself, but only as one of  the collective of Women.

Women’s major contribution to society is no longer as the bearers of children. They are female economic units (FEUs). Feminism proclaims a battle between women and men for power. Corporations setting quotas, hire and promote women in place of men. Women must be hired as FEUs, and promoted as FEUs, but any hint of behavior that acknowledges their sex can be the basis for a law suit.

How does society know when a woman is sincerely disgusted, ashamed, humiliated, nauseated etc. by a co-worker or boss?  Sincerity is beside the point. How do we know whether the pass was hostile or amatory? It makes no difference which it is. Heterosexual desire is now immoral. The intention of the perp is beside the point. And so we see the erosion of the idea that “rape” is a horrible crime (except on school campuses, where the cry of “rape” from a malicious female can wreck a young man’s career prospects and reputation without his being allowed to defend himself). In the smart world, rape is on the way to becoming a strict liability offense. The more women are “equal”  to men, the less their bodies/persons warrant special protection. Sexual assault is now just one form of common assault – unwanted touching, of varying degrees of force.

Is a man’s exposing himself and masturbating in front of a Big Girl anything more than ludicrousness? The moral outrage at Mr. Big’s years of unwanted touching does not signal virtue. No-one in Hollywood can reclaim that sort of virtue.

No adult anywhere in the West can, thanks to the universal license supplied by the New Left in 1968.

The Left owns the culture. As a matter of ethical correctness, it teaches prurience to infants.

Pornography is the way, the truth, and the life, in fiction and reality, in the Arts and in the News.